27 June 2013 1:21 PM

An Interview with the York University newspaper "Nouse"

Alas, there will be no recording of my conversation with Greg Dyke at the University of York last Sunday, which was often quite entertaining (f0r me, anyway).

But here is one of the interviews I gave to student newspapers afterwards. Others may yet appear. I’d dispute with Mr Witherow that I ever used the word ‘learnings’ (he says the recording is fuzzy there) , and I rebut his suggestion that I refuse to argue about addiction ‘on scientific grounds’. My view is entirely scientific. In the absence of any objective evidence of ‘addiction’, or of any sustainable objective definition of it, it is clearly a concept based upon relativist morality. This sort of thing is always a problem when someone else is describing an argument.

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“In the absence of any objective evidence of ‘addiction’,”

Some evidence exists, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it. Evidence of behaviour that goes beyond risky or dangerous, behaviour which is pathological. People that pay an enormous cost to acquire drugs, take enormous risk for tiny return, prostitute themselves on the street for petty amounts of cash, lose all their worldly possessions, rob their own families and friends, go without food or drink or sleep, watch their own bodies deteriorate. Evidence that goes beyond selfish pursuit of pleasure, into something which consumes people's lives. People - not a small number of eccentric obsessives, but thousands of people in nearly every town.

“or of any sustainable objective definition of it,”

Definitions of things change over time. In the modern day in particular in science and medicine, and in particular in understanding the mind and brain, and mental health. That's not because these things don't really objectively exist, it's because we don't know everything and our understanding is constantly updating and evolving.

“it is clearly a concept based upon relativist morality.”

Non sequitur, or at least, I don't understand how you made that leap. I think the interviewer did a good job calling you out for evading scientific debate and offering semantic argument instead. Your morality-based dismissal denies objective reality, or at least refuses to engage with it.

"When Hitchens was young he “needed to grow up”. “I was a child at university,” he spits, the Trotskyism he espoused so thoroughly rejected since. According to Hitchens it took a serious motorbike accident and the death of his parents for him to ‘grow up’ – a necessary step to earn a position in the public debate in this slightly curious binary. And if you haven’t had these sorts of life experiences? “Oh, you’re still welcome to an opinion, but it’s not worth as much as mine.”

Can Peter Hitchens name anyone who's opinion he does think is worth more than his?

Basically he just wants to be Prime Minister and can't understand why people less worthy than himself like 'the creature' Blair 'slippery' Cameron and 'tragic failure' Thatcher get to do it and not him. Perhaps they were prepared to do the hard yards it takes to climb the greasy pole and had the interpersonal skills required to influence other and inspire them to follow them?
His disdainful view of others is part of the reason that others would not follow him and join any party that he set up (or rather that he joined once it had been set up for him by others - less mortals doing the groundwork, ready for his arrival).
Hitchens is an impressive man with impressive achievements which are to be respected but his dismissal of others does him no favours. He even belittles many of his supporters on here with phrases like 'comment warriors' (is he not one of those?) and saying that only rare contributions make his involvement in this weblog worthwhile etc

Ps are all of his opinions always worth more than everyone else's, on all subjects? Does a life of student politics and then political journalism (skimming over the 'real' lives of others and delivery comments thereon) plus parental deaths and motorbike accidents just trump all other lives, experiences and opinions then?
How about businessmen who've spent their lives building companies and creating wealth? Inventors? Doctors? Churchmen? Teachers? Farmers? Policemen?
All so much less compared to the student / journalist / writer who produces nothing but opinions.

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